Note 17 — MODERN GREECE.

“Looking generally at the narrowness and abruptness of this mountain-channel, (Tempe,) and contrasting it with the course of the Peneus through the plains of Thessaly, the imagination instantly recurs to the tradition that these plains were once covered with water, for which some convulsion of nature had subsequently opened this narrow passage. The term vale, in our language, is usually employed to describe scenery in which the predominant features are breadth, beauty, and repose. The reader has already perceived that the term is wholly inapplicable to the scenery at this spot, and that the phrase, vale of Tempe, is one that depends on poetic fiction.... The real character of Tempe, though it perhaps be less beautiful, yet possesses more of magnificence than is implied in the epithet given to it.... To those who have visited St Vincent’s rocks, below Bristol, I cannot convey a more sufficient idea of Tempe, than by saying that its scenery resembles, though on a much larger scale, that of the former place. The Peneus, indeed, as it flows through the valley, is not greatly wider than the Avon; and the channel between the cliffs is equally contracted in its dimensions: but these cliffs themselves are much loftier and more precipitous, and project their vast masses of rock with still more extraordinary abruptness over the hollow beneath.”—Holland’s Travels in Albania, &c.